Teddy Pendergrass was born to Ida Geraldine Epps and the late Jesse Pendergrass (murdered in 1962), who left when Pendergrass was young and was not a part of his life. He was a student at the old Thomas Edison High School for Boys in Philadelphia. Teddy started singing gospel music in Philadelphia churches, becoming an ordained minister at ten years old. While attending public school, he sang in the city-wide McIntyre Elementary School Choir and in the All-City Stetson Junior High School Choir. A self-taught drummer, Pendergrass had a teen pop vocal group when he was 15.
By his late teens, Pendergrass was a drummer for local vocal group the Cadillacs. In the late '60s, the Cadillacs merged with another more-established group, Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.